Fall 2003 Video Card Roundup - Part 3: ATI's Radeon 9600 XT
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Derek Wilson on October 15, 2003 10:26 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Halo Performance
The packaged benchmark that comes with the Halo is made up of all the cut scenes between levels (which are pretty graphics intensive). We ran the benchmark at 1024x768 @ 75Hz , which provided plenty of work for all our cards. We opted to simply include average framerate for this article, but there are some really cool features of this benchmark (like percentage of time above a certain frame rate) that we may revisit later.
We used the new 1.02 patch for this review which improved the performance of all cards under the benchmark a decent amount thanks to the removal of a memory check that used to occur every frame.
The 9600 XT makes good gains over the Pro in Halo. Of course, this is not surprising as Halo makes heavy use of pixel shaders which really benefit from the clock speed boost of the XT. This is a very nice gain of over 19% and one of the top gains in our lineup. We still aren't coming near 9700 Pro speeds though.
Homeworld 2
Unfortunately, neither of our RV3x0 cards would run Homeworld 2. We would get hard locks while running the game every time on both cards. This did, however, facilitate our testing of the VPU Recovery functionality introduced with Catalyst 3.8. At some points during other games we would see the VPU recovery kick in and everything would be fine and we'd go about our business. When Homeworld 2 locks the card we get a message that says VPU recovery wasn't able to fully reset the hardware and we will be blessed with the wonders of software rendering until we reboot. This is definitely better than having no recourse but to pull the plug from the wall, and we're glad to see that we couldn't freeze the entire system as we had previously with the 9600 Pro under Catalyst 3.7.
Both ATI and NVIDIA have known issues with Homeworld 2, and we are hoping that they will both be working closely with developers to solve these problems quickly. In the meantime, we are looking into possible workarounds and hope to bring you numbers for RV3x0 cards under Homeworld 2 in future articles.
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PrinceGaz - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
You can infer how a 9500pro would do by considering it a bit like a slightly faster 9600xt in core speed, but with slower memory. That isn't as daft as it sounds.The 9600xt is a 4-pipeline 500mhz core while the 9500pro was an 8-pipeline 275mhz core, so the older 9500pro at default core-speed could be thought of as being a 550mhz 9600xt, before the improvements in the RV350 core over the R300 are considered. I doubt a 9600xt is gonna reach 550mhz easily so the 9500pro should have a slight edge in core-horsepower.
Memory-wise, the 9600xt should be in front both in memory-speed and efficiency which would suggest, so at least in theory the 9600xt should be somewhat faster than the 9500pro in DX8 titles but not so far ahead when DX9 shaders are used intensively.
I still think including the 9800se in the benchmarks is essential thanks to its high memory-bandwidth, especially when its over $50 cheaper than a 9700non-pro, let alone the even more expensive 9700pro.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
hmm...so why wasnt the 9500pro used in the review?was there any reason that was given ?
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
good review, good conclusion...i totally agree in almost everything. only overclocking performance wouldve been an interesting additionAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
On a side track, can anyone tell me a decent cooler for the ATi brand of cards? Seems like there is a serious lack of good heatsinks and fan combos for these parts. All I have seen are two different heatpipe applications that seem like a step in the wrong direction. Why can't someone produce a good chunk of copper with a good fan for my 9600 Pro???Wiley
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
damm i though that 9600 XT would be great. but all i can see is another product from ati that steals your money. i prefer to buy a 9500 proAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
Beyond3D benchmarked the 9600XT against the 9500 Pro as well as the 9600 ProAnonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
#25: $216 at GameVE. Considering the 9600 XT is $199 though, i think Anand has a point.http://www.gameve.com/store/gameve_viewitem.asp?id...
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
It would have been great if Anand and Derek had put a 9500 Pro to the review. I'm curious how it stacks up against 9600 Pro/XT and 5600 Ultra in all these benchmarks. Does anybody know?Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
I was really hoping to see the 9600XT do better, but the scores are still great for the price range. It's amazing that my 9700-pro, which I bought almost a year ago for $300, still keeps up so well.I agree with #26 in regards to anonymous posting. I like it, but if it bothers everybody else, please lift the 'no free e-mail address' requirement, or I, the single greatest poster ever, would no longer be able to post, and Anandtech would lose at least 50% of it's reader base. :) Besides, I really don't mind trolls. It shakes things up.
Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - link
#29, you and me both wish =(But remember, why use logic when you can use Flash?